Part 2--Airport Anxiety--An Extreme Need for Sedatives and Bloody Mary's
Communism is alive and well in the American airport. Forget about waiting in lines for stale rye bread. . .in the new promised land we wait in lines just to move. Lines of security, lines of luggage, lines checking in, lines to take off your shoes, get stripped, get dressed, to get into lines devolving into lines leading to the last line, the fiendish goal of which is to make you so sick of waiting and standing that you’re actually fucking relieved to be in that seat that’s always two inches too small and forget that the bastards aren’t even going to try to feed you. By the end of that long, sad procession, the noble soul is so beaten down that you're ready for positively anything.
And boarding the plane, everybody with their plane face, shuffling, groaning, waking up all over again and fighting for overhead compartment space, waiting while some shmoe fights with his luggage, attempting to force it to be twice as small as it is. . .doesn’t anybody check anything anymore? Post modern pack mules, is that a goddamned fanny pack? The fuck?
The head is stuck on auto rewind and slow motion forward, the scene with the cute taxi driver keeps replaying with directors commentary, I haven’t slept, and the plane, it seems like it just won’t ever go.
The puking, the stress, that awkward goodbye. . .
I’m fading now, it’s all so tired—like an etch-a-sketch held upside down, reality dripping sandy streaks of quicksilver.
My seat is center, sandwiched between hovering silent newspapers all the way from Portland to Atlanta, only the gentle flapping of the pages lets me know that the humans next to me are still breathing. The eyelids sag, reality grew soggy and slow, I struggled to remain seated upright--I've fallen asleep on other peoples shoulders before. Hi, my name is Sterling.
The stewardess—everytime the sweet quiet came and the great dark descended like a holy balm, her voice burst out behind me like a large duck being strangled in an old mechanical clock. The movie was awful and punishing. Switch to the classical station, mysterious strains of some ancient violin concerto filtered through the headphones, magically maintained my increasingly egg-shell-fragile mind all the way to Atlanta.
Stopovers. Changeovers. Between flights—caught slacked over in a bucket seat, drooling tobacco flavored dreams, watching the daze parade of CNN on a t.v. stapled to the ceiling. The news is so typical—death and horror in plasma vision, who did the vice president shoot this time? I munch on the remains of an egg salad sandwich, flown fresh from Portland Oregon that very morning.
I made a phone call to the Guy with the Art Gallery. . .he wasn’t expecting me. Truth be told I was nervous as hell about staying with him--his email address is BBoyWriter@aol.com--would you stay with a person with a name like that? I was positively begging to be molested or robbed, but what choice did I have? I was playing my cards as quickly as I was dealt them. . .feeling the path out as I walked it. . .at any rate I had already made up my mind the night before while gripping the porcelain, and you just can’t deny a moment like that.
He said okay, he had space that night, but he was weirded out that I was calling him last minute. . .which was good. I wanted him off guard. No time to plan anything.
Finally the plane, pick up and go, and land, seemingly all at once. A short sweet flight if there ever was one. I raced from the plane to the taxi line and sucked down two cigarettes in rapid succession as though they were divine nipples excreting sacred milk.
Saving 15 bucks by taking an economy shuttle sounded like a fabulous idea, despite my zombie fugue and unholy itch to have a decent bloody mary as quickly as possible.. The catch is that it won’t take me directly to where I’m going—there will be a 12 block walk to BBoyWriters den of terror. 12 blocks sounds fucking flyable, like my heels will never touch asphalt I’ve already come so far that day. My suitcase and tent feel light in my hands, my backpack is feather light. I was ready to go, the sacred alcoholic itch was working wonders on my nerves already, having landed in this most sacred city.
For an hour and a half I watch taxi’s and hotel shuttles whiz past me with demonic regularity while waiting for the Economy Shuttle. The line I’m in is growing. . .we’re restless, we demand to know what the fuck. Some of us give up and leave, take taxi’s, fuck the money. We strategize mutinies. It is discovered that Pre-Katrina they had a fleet of over 60 vans. . .post Katrina they only have 8. . .A shuttle arrives and an old tired black man hops out, chats with the lady on the radio. He returns to the van and discovers he’s locked his keys inside. This is starting to make too much sense.
Finally, on board another shuttle, what seems like hours later, a whiny Valley refugee from L.A. managed to justify and fulfill every L.A. stereotype for stupidity, prattling to the driver about all the silly New Orleanians who stayed behind during the storm.. . .I kept angling behind me trying to get a look at this girl--a girl of such monumentally stupid proportions must be a looker—right? Other wise natural selection would have taught her to keep her mouth shut earlier. The driver, a big smooth champion of a black man, he took it all in stride, interrupting her occasionally to point out a wrecked house or the waterline. . .a thick brown swathe six and seven feet high. . .like God took a brown crayola to the city. . .churches, trees, electronics stores boarded up and empty. . .telephone poles like snapped match sticks, jutting out at ridiculous angles to the ground. . .the girl from Los Angeles, she’s on the phone, “And oh my God you wouldn’t, like, BELIEVE the devastation!” and the driver, he said, “Well, you know this area wasn’t really hit. . .the place that got hurt is down a little ways. . .”)
And boarding the plane, everybody with their plane face, shuffling, groaning, waking up all over again and fighting for overhead compartment space, waiting while some shmoe fights with his luggage, attempting to force it to be twice as small as it is. . .doesn’t anybody check anything anymore? Post modern pack mules, is that a goddamned fanny pack? The fuck?
The head is stuck on auto rewind and slow motion forward, the scene with the cute taxi driver keeps replaying with directors commentary, I haven’t slept, and the plane, it seems like it just won’t ever go.
The puking, the stress, that awkward goodbye. . .
I’m fading now, it’s all so tired—like an etch-a-sketch held upside down, reality dripping sandy streaks of quicksilver.
My seat is center, sandwiched between hovering silent newspapers all the way from Portland to Atlanta, only the gentle flapping of the pages lets me know that the humans next to me are still breathing. The eyelids sag, reality grew soggy and slow, I struggled to remain seated upright--I've fallen asleep on other peoples shoulders before. Hi, my name is Sterling.
The stewardess—everytime the sweet quiet came and the great dark descended like a holy balm, her voice burst out behind me like a large duck being strangled in an old mechanical clock. The movie was awful and punishing. Switch to the classical station, mysterious strains of some ancient violin concerto filtered through the headphones, magically maintained my increasingly egg-shell-fragile mind all the way to Atlanta.
Stopovers. Changeovers. Between flights—caught slacked over in a bucket seat, drooling tobacco flavored dreams, watching the daze parade of CNN on a t.v. stapled to the ceiling. The news is so typical—death and horror in plasma vision, who did the vice president shoot this time? I munch on the remains of an egg salad sandwich, flown fresh from Portland Oregon that very morning.
I made a phone call to the Guy with the Art Gallery. . .he wasn’t expecting me. Truth be told I was nervous as hell about staying with him--his email address is BBoyWriter@aol.com--would you stay with a person with a name like that? I was positively begging to be molested or robbed, but what choice did I have? I was playing my cards as quickly as I was dealt them. . .feeling the path out as I walked it. . .at any rate I had already made up my mind the night before while gripping the porcelain, and you just can’t deny a moment like that.
He said okay, he had space that night, but he was weirded out that I was calling him last minute. . .which was good. I wanted him off guard. No time to plan anything.
Finally the plane, pick up and go, and land, seemingly all at once. A short sweet flight if there ever was one. I raced from the plane to the taxi line and sucked down two cigarettes in rapid succession as though they were divine nipples excreting sacred milk.
Saving 15 bucks by taking an economy shuttle sounded like a fabulous idea, despite my zombie fugue and unholy itch to have a decent bloody mary as quickly as possible.. The catch is that it won’t take me directly to where I’m going—there will be a 12 block walk to BBoyWriters den of terror. 12 blocks sounds fucking flyable, like my heels will never touch asphalt I’ve already come so far that day. My suitcase and tent feel light in my hands, my backpack is feather light. I was ready to go, the sacred alcoholic itch was working wonders on my nerves already, having landed in this most sacred city.
For an hour and a half I watch taxi’s and hotel shuttles whiz past me with demonic regularity while waiting for the Economy Shuttle. The line I’m in is growing. . .we’re restless, we demand to know what the fuck. Some of us give up and leave, take taxi’s, fuck the money. We strategize mutinies. It is discovered that Pre-Katrina they had a fleet of over 60 vans. . .post Katrina they only have 8. . .A shuttle arrives and an old tired black man hops out, chats with the lady on the radio. He returns to the van and discovers he’s locked his keys inside. This is starting to make too much sense.
Finally, on board another shuttle, what seems like hours later, a whiny Valley refugee from L.A. managed to justify and fulfill every L.A. stereotype for stupidity, prattling to the driver about all the silly New Orleanians who stayed behind during the storm.. . .I kept angling behind me trying to get a look at this girl--a girl of such monumentally stupid proportions must be a looker—right? Other wise natural selection would have taught her to keep her mouth shut earlier. The driver, a big smooth champion of a black man, he took it all in stride, interrupting her occasionally to point out a wrecked house or the waterline. . .a thick brown swathe six and seven feet high. . .like God took a brown crayola to the city. . .churches, trees, electronics stores boarded up and empty. . .telephone poles like snapped match sticks, jutting out at ridiculous angles to the ground. . .the girl from Los Angeles, she’s on the phone, “And oh my God you wouldn’t, like, BELIEVE the devastation!” and the driver, he said, “Well, you know this area wasn’t really hit. . .the place that got hurt is down a little ways. . .”)
posted by Sterling at 2:13 PM
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